From the Archives: The Posies played Whelans, Dublin on July 21, 2005. It was a great show and the new tracks from Every Kind of Light sounded fantastic. Earlier that day I chatted to Ken Stringfellow about his relationship with bandmate Jon Auer and the writing and recording of Every Kind of Light. We also chatted about Ken's contribution to The Long Winters' album When I Pretend to Fall, playing live with REM and the pleasure of singing harmonies with Mike Mills. The recording sessions for Every Kind of Light were interspersed with sessions for both REM's Around the Sun and Big Star's In Space. Ken admits that it all got a bit crazy, "It was insane, I was in Seattle working on my thing one day, and then I'd go to the Bahamas to work with REM and Memphis to work with Big Star. I went to South by Southwest to play with Big Star and then back to Seattle. It was quite an amazing few months." I asked Ken had the guys from REM been interested to know how the Big Star sessions were coming along and he told me that the weird thing was that Terry Manning who runs Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas where REM were recording, had been a recording engineer at Ardent on all the early Big Star records. Things had come full circle. Ken was an absolute gentleman.
